Above the mage

Chapter 339 Choice

The vast magic training ground fell silent for a moment.

After a while, the quiet atmosphere was broken by increasingly rapid breathing.

"How could you be so cruel to your colleague?" A sea sentinel mage who was watching the battle and did not recognize Gao De stepped forward and said sternly.

"The battle was intense, and I couldn't stop myself. I apologized to him," Gao De replied calmly, looking at the unfamiliar sea sentinel mage.

Upon hearing this, the other person's expression darkened, and they continued, "Does an apology really make a difference?"

"If it was useless, why did he apologize to me in advance?" Gao De asked in surprise.

"Training and assessment are meant to simulate real combat, and injuries are common. When did it become your place to criticize?" The man was about to say something more when a deep voice rang out.

Captain Rol, dressed in the uniform of a Sea Sentinel Captain, appeared in the spell training field at some point. Beside him was the mage Naxi, who was nodding slightly to God.

Captain Roll's voice silenced the sea sentinel mage, who slunk away and retreated in disgrace.

"Announce the results," he said, looking at the three examiners present.

The three examiners exchanged glances, and finally the examiner sitting in the middle seat stood up and announced: "The second-class apprentice mage, Gao De, defeated the examinee Metis during the training assessment. No scoring is required, and he can be directly judged to have passed the assessment."

Training assessments do not require defeating the examinee; as long as the score meets the standard, one can pass. However, if one defeats the examinee, one passes directly without any controversy.

This is the unspoken rule.

The assessment was over, and the results had been announced. The sea sentinel mages who had been watching had no reason to linger any longer and left the scene.

Zuo Wen Burns glanced at Gao De with a calm expression, but the gloom in his eyes was impossible to hide.

Because he was very angry.

It wasn't that I was angry that Metis was beaten so badly by God.

After all, Metis was just a tool to him, not even one of his own, so he didn't care whether Metis got hurt or not.

Zuo Wen Burns was annoyed because he had lost to Gao De twice in a row.

The first attempt to recruit Gaode failed, and this attempt to give Gaode a blow also failed.

This was unacceptable to Zuo Wen Burns, who had always had a smooth life and could get whatever he wanted.

Furious as he was, Zuo Wen Burns didn't say much.

However, this does not mean that he has no thoughts about Gaode.

For him, verbal threats are the lowest and most useless tactic.

It serves no purpose other than to warn the other party and demonstrate one's own incompetence.

Besides, it's just passing the assessment; the real challenge lies in the execution of tasks and the annual evaluation.

By then, Gao De will understand that no matter how talented a person is, they are nothing in the face of the powerful foundation of the nobility.

"Congratulations," said the monk Naxi, stepping forward.

"Thank you for your careful guidance during this time, Master Naxi," Gao De said, bowing slightly to Master Naxi.

Captain Roll watched this scene in silence, giving a barely perceptible nod.

He and the Naxi mage entered the fray midway through the battle between God and Metis.

Captain Roll highly praised God's performance in battle, his use of magic, and his on-the-spot reactions.

However, even though Captain Rolpe knew that Metis's ruthless actions after he had already won still made Captain Rolpe have some other thoughts in his mind:

Could this be a violent and tyrannical mage? Could he be the next Jaden?

While Gao De's respect for the Naxi Master might not have made Captain Roel completely trust Gao De's character, it at least allowed him to see some positive qualities in Gao De.

"Carry him away and take him to the Holy Healing Center," Captain Rol waved his hand and gave the order.

The staff present then realized what was happening and rushed forward to carry the still wailing Metis away from the spell training ground.

"The training and assessment are over. You can go back now. Come see me with Naxi later. I was Naxi's mentor when he first joined the Sea Sentinels, so I'm considered your elder," Captain Rol said.

"Okay," Gao De replied, then nodded slightly to the three examiners to express his gratitude before walking out.

"Gaode!"

He had just stepped out of Collingwood Academy when he heard someone calling his name.

Looking in the direction the sound came from, it was Melia.

"You're amazing!" Melia exclaimed excitedly, waving her fist as if she herself had defeated Metis. Her voice rose in a triumphant chord as she exclaimed, "That's Metis! One of the most powerful first-ring mages among our Sea Sentinels, and you defeated him so easily!"

"Thank you for reminding me today," Gao De said with a smile.

After joining the Sea Sentinel, he received both inexplicable malice and much goodwill.

For example, the Naxi monk, and Melia.

Before Melia could say anything more, another person walked over.

It was Ul, a lackey of Zovin Burns.

"God." Ul looked at God with a complicated expression.

"Is there something you need?" Gao De asked calmly, looking at the other person.

"I understand what you're thinking right now. You're probably very confident that you can defeat the renowned Metis on your own. If I were you, I would definitely think the same way."

He sighed and continued, "But you must understand, you only defeated Metis, not the Burns family."

Ur's tone became very serious, "A mage with your talent, yet born a commoner, and from another country at that, wants to peacefully carry out missions and train in the Sea Sentinels? Let me tell you, that's simply impossible."

"Many eyes will be watching you, forcing you to make choices. No matter how talented you are, it's just talent. If you don't make a choice, you will be targeted. This is something you can't stop with your talent."

"No one has ever been an exception, not even Jaden, whom the mage Naxi had previously mentored. He was the most talented mage we Sea Sentinels had recruited in the past thirty years, but in the end he couldn't withstand the suppression from the nobles, which was the fuse that led to his betrayal of the Golden Fern." As if this matter was taboo, Ur stopped midway through his sentence, suddenly realizing something.

"Did Zuowen Burns send you to say these things to me?" God asked.

"No." Ur was taken aback, never expecting that after all he had said, this was what Gao De was concerned about.

"Are you finished speaking?"

"I'm done speaking."

Gao De looked at Ul, "Just because it never has doesn't mean it never will."

"It's simple, I'll be the exception." He turned away, no longer looking at Ur, and strode forward, saying as he walked.

Ul watched in silence as God's figure gradually disappeared into the distance.

After a while, Melia's voice suddenly came.

"If he succeeds, at least it will provide a visible path for mages like you. Isn't that a good thing?"

Ur gritted his teeth, unconvinced, and said, "How is that possible? Mage Melia, you are also of noble birth. You should know that the situation of the dynasty is no longer something that can be changed by one or two people."

Melia waved her hand, "I dare not accept that title. My father was just a knight, how could he dare to claim to be of noble birth?"

"At least for me, that's what it means to be an aristocrat."

"I'm not going to talk to you about this." Melia shook her head, finding it rather boring, and left on her own.

Inside a restaurant in the Whitechapel district.

Eleven teenagers dressed in gray and brown short jackets sat around a long wooden bench in front of a large table.

These are all errand runners hired by Gaode to keep an eye on the shops for him.

The burlap cuffs of the young errand runners were stained with coal dust and brown dirt, proof that they had been staking out chimneys and checking sewers.

Every other day, these errand runners would report their surveillance results to Gaode Maps.

Gaode Maps will then list the information reported by the deliverymen on parchment, forming a visual and intuitive table for easy analysis.

"The tea shop No. 1, according to the seller's own information, has an excellent location and is doing well. However, the seller is preparing to return to his hometown to develop his business, so he is reluctantly transferring the shop."

"But according to our on-site observation, this shop only burned cigarettes four times in three days, less than twice a day on average. Either it's doing terribly and has short operating hours, or it's on the verge of bankruptcy."

"Shop number three is a bakery. There were 19 smokes in three days, averaging six times a day. Bakeries need to bake bread continuously, so the frequent smokes are a sign of a thriving business. According to the deliveryman's observation, the customer traffic is also quite large."

"However, there's one detail: the deliveryman noticed that this bakery had very little sewage discharge, and the chimney ash didn't smell of wheat."

"It's highly likely that the shop owner, who was on the verge of bankruptcy, deliberately lit fires frequently and hired others to pretend to be customers, creating the appearance of high foot traffic in order to sell the poorly performing shop for a high price that only a prime location would offer."

"The number of times the shop smoked was perfectly timed—once in the morning, once at noon, and once in the evening. However, after the errand boy responsible for monitoring the shop poured lime powder into the chimney, he found traces of lime sprayed out in the flue of the crematorium furnace at a funeral home a block away."

"It's highly likely they share a ventilation duct. They call it a prime location, but it's either an illegal workshop or a tool for fraud."

Gaode looked at the data he had listed in the table, eliminating shops one by one, and quickly crossed out three suspicious shops based on the available information.

Of the remaining eight shops, he focused on three.

A herbal medicine shop located in the North District was on the verge of bankruptcy due to poor management, and the owner decided to sell the shop.

The North District is the area where the magical plant shops were located, as mentioned by the young guide Gao De had hired when he first arrived in Dorne.

Most of the magical plant gardens in Dorne are located here.

This herbal medicine shop is on the verge of bankruptcy because of its poor location near Muddy Garden and Mushroom Plain, which has severely squeezed out its customer traffic.

Considering this issue, the herbal medicine shop has been listed for a month now, but no transactions have been made, and the price has dropped from the initial 550 gold coin to the current 500 gold coin.

Buying shops here has the advantage of facilitating Gaode's acquisition of tree species.

The downside is the poor location; facing competition from two major plant shops, it won't be easy to make the shop successful.

Although Gaode doesn't plan to continue running the herbal shop, he prefers to open a magic material shop instead.

However, the North District is a cluster of magical plant shops. Opening a magical material shop in such a place is like opening a hardware store in a food street. It is inherently incompatible with the needs of a fixed customer base and is somewhat suicidal.

The second shop is a street-front grocery store located in the East District, near Dezo.

The shop is a two-story structure. The first floor is a street-facing storefront for business, and the second floor is a residential area, connected by an internal staircase.

The shop owner sold the shop for two reasons. First, it was originally a traditional family-run retail store. The owner's son refused to take over the traditional business and switched to factory work, leaving the shop without a successor. Second, the owner was getting old, so he started to consider selling the shop.

In addition, in recent years, several large chain grocery stores have sprung up in Dorn City, seizing the market with their daily low-price strategy. Traditional family-run retail stores find it difficult to compete with this kind of competition.

Gaode plans to transform it into a magic supplies store and does not need to consider competition from large chain grocery stores, so this flaw is not a concern.

What he valued most was that Troll Skull Alley, the "black market," was located on Dezolin Street, near this general store.

In other words, there would be many mages on the street in Dezo who need to buy or sell extraordinary materials and do not want to leave any traces.

These monks only cared about the quality of the materials, not their origin.

This matches the situation with Gaode Maps.

—If he's in the business of magical materials, most of them are brought directly from the Northern Territory, so their origins are rather unclear.

The grocery store was asking for 650 goldbird coins.

Since the business situation has not yet reached the point of being unsustainable, there is relatively little room for negotiation.

With that in mind, Gaode drew a circle behind the grocery store, marking it as a key area to observe.

The third shop, also located in the East District, was also a family-run grocery store that was forced to sell its business after being squeezed out of the market by large chain grocery stores. However, it was on another street, three streets away from Dezo.

Compared to the second shop, its advantage is that the price is cheaper, only 450 gold coin, and there is even a chance to bargain.

The downside is that if you open a magic supplies store, the potential market is far less than that of the former, which is adjacent to Troll Skull Alley.

Gaode calculated his savings:

271 Golden Bird Flower coins plus 7 Silver Dragon coins.

This amount of money is not enough to buy any shop.

To take over a shop, one would need to return to the Northern Territory and bring back some extraordinary materials to sell in order to accumulate enough money.

Now that he has joined the Sea Sentinels, there are rules to follow when selling extraordinary materials; he can no longer do it as casually as before.

Once you enter the "system," one very important point is to ensure that your resume is clean and unblemished.

If he suddenly had access to a batch of extraordinary materials of unknown origin, given that he was still from the province of Xinen, he would easily be suspected of being a "spy".

Gao De had no doubt about the Sea Sentinels' ability to gather intelligence on the mages within the organization.

The reason he opened the "Magic Material Shop" was to legitimately whitewash the extraordinary materials he obtained from the North.

(End of this chapter)